Chapter 660: Kaijin Remains
=Oh no.=
=B-but that can’t be. We destroyed those manuals ourselves, it was literally the only time I’ve ever condoned a book burning.=
=This should be impossible. How did one of those accursed manuals escaped our sweeps? Unless there was a-=
=I DON’T KNOW, BUT I NEED YOU TO CALM DOWN AND HELP ME THINK OF A WAY TO GET RAZORSTELLA AND THE OTHERS OUT OF THERE BEFORE THEY BECOME STOLEN TOO!=
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=I…I can’t handle another situation like that again…not again…never again…=
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A small excerpt from The Nature of Kaijin, a journal kept by the Kaijin Lord: Grand Observer.
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By design, kaijin are loyal to exactly three things in this universe: their desires, their progenitor and each other.
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A [Desire Core] is what anchors a kaijin to reality and allows them to interact with the world, as such, they have an intrinsic need to fulfill the desire that gave them life in the first place.
Attempting to deny a kaijin their intrinsic desires will normally lead to disaster. (Read: The Silver Rhinoceros Hall [Glutton] Event, casualties numbered in the thousands…at minimum.)
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All kaijin are extremely loyal to their progenitors, their Kaijin Lord, and for a good reason.
The Kaijin Lord, quite literally, shapes their very existence as well as fuel their continued existence via their connection, the soul link.
Without a kaijin lord to fuel them, a kaijin would devolve into something more…primal and dangerous, regardless of how powerful they may be in terms of cultivation.
It has been stated that a surefire way to incur the wrath of the kaijin is to injure or kill a kaijin lord in their prescence. (Read: The Last Stand of the Storm Queen, also under the title of The Fall of the Undertow Kingdom and The Death of the Sapphire Horde.)
The other method of incurring this wrath is to dishonor their dead kinfolk.
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Kaijin are not allowed to exist in this world, not naturally at least.
They understand from the moment they are created that this world actively rejects them and that they must reject this world in turn.
It is in this shared identity of being “unnatural rejects” that the kaijin understand implicitly that they need to rely on one another in order to survive this cruel world.
Regardless of their affinities, their abilities or even personalities, kaijin will always help out fellow kaijin even if its to their own detriment.
Unsurprisingly, this kinship between kaijin extends even beyond the veil of death, to the point that a commonsense saying was inspired by this loyalty.
Never steal from a demon’s corpse, lest you wish for the demons to steal from you.
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I once asked one of my kaijin, one who’s core was dedicated to faith and was made from the scrying mirror of an old flame, as to why they react so violently when they detect one of their fallen brethren being used as salvage.
As kaijin lord, I am used to feeling all manner of feelings and thoughts being shared between me and them, but this was the first time I felt such a unified force of rage, hate and despair all at once.
It was like feeling the entire aftermath of a war all at once.
When he told me the reason, I made sure to transcribe the answer in its totality.
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You mortals are lucky to have a completed soul. To know that when your corporeal forms decay, that you’ll be able to live on in another plane of existence, or better yet, you’re able to reincarnate and live again on this simple yet wonderful level of material reality.
We don’t get that luxury, nay, we don’t get that right.
For our souls are not able to fully leave our bodies, just enough to keep our bodies from decaying and to remind the world that we existed.
We already stole our right to live and exist, we’re born from the rejected scraps of the forge of creation itself, by stealing from the world its treasures, its lives and its desires. It feels wrong to us to have someone else steal back something we had already stolen just by living…at least that’s what we tell each other.
In reality, my dear professor, it is an instinct.
We feel it down to our very cores a sense of wrongness, a violation greater than any other feeling in this world or the next when we see someone eradicate the last remainder of our existence with themselves…
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We can hear their screams, professor.
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We hear their screams.
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Needless to say, I now understand why the kaijin react the way they do in regards to the treatment of their dead.
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The Fallen Clan warriors were absolutely floored when they saw a pair of…oddities…suddenly appear out of nowhere and attack their War Elder, launching him into a pile of rubble and debris no less. Namely due to the fact that they had no idea what the fuck these two were exactly.
Visually, they thought the two new arrivals were aether puppets, but the way they were moving seemed to suggest that they were alive while the weird energy coming off of them was the exact same weird energy that was coming off of both their elder and the strange half-being that was attacking them earlier.
Either way, they were scared, confused and angry at these new arrivals.
Some of the less level-headed and more headstrong warriors were just about to rush in to not only assist their fallen ancestor, but also attack these new interlopers.
Strange energy and beings be damned, they weren’t going to let them get away with this transgression.
However, just as they were about to attack, they were stopped by the Aether Lord, Gao Yu Feng.
They were just about to protest against this rejection of action, until Gao Yu Feng explained himself.
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[Seriously, we need to get out of here right now. You understand that we’re no match for this guy, right?]
[Yes.]
[And that if we want even a modicum of success in defeating this guy, we need to regroup with the others?]
[Yes.]
[So why am I getting this feeling that you want to kill this guy even if its kills you?!]
[I don’t know, but every fiber of my existence is telling me to rip that fucker’s arm clean off!]
[Why?!]
[Instincts, I guess?!]
[Take it back…]
[You’re not helping! Wait until you get a name before doing and saying anything else, please!]
After having landed a successful surprise attack on the War Elder, launching the man into a ruined cell, Spring Brawler had taken the initiative to pull Razorstella out of the ground and secured the evolving zako by turning her back into a zako marble and fastening her into a slot that was built into his chest. Technically this slot was for aether crystals and arrays, but it worked in a pinch.
Their next course of action, after doing all of this, should’ve been to simply secure the safety of the two Zhen Clan elders and get the hell back to the arena before shit went even more sideways than they already have. Unfortunately, that wasn’t happening right now.
For reasons that Spring Brawler could vaguely comprehend, thanks to being a proto-kaijin, Razorstella was tensing up like she was ready to go on a rampage and was having great difficulty getting herself to listen to him.
It was if the primal part of her brain was overpowering her normal sense of reasoning, which was weird to Spring Brawler since none of them, as kaijins, had brains!
Except maybe Hurricroak, Archanidame and Lacerage, since they were all organic.
Either way, Spring Brawler needed her to get moving and out of this shit hole or they were all fucked. As such, he tried to use his words again.
[Come on, Razor sis, we don’t need to be here anymore. Can you just-]
*Rumble*
[I’LL KILL HIM!]
[Godsdammit.]
In the exact that Spring Brawler was about to do another round of encouraging Razorstella to just leave, he sensed a spike in both aether and [Chaos] coming from the ruined cell he had just kicked the War Elder into.
Sensing this spike in energy, Razorstella spread her claws open and was just about to march over to where the War Elder was in order to attack.
(Un)fortunately, Spring Brawler was quicker than she was, and grabbed her by the shoulder.
At this point, Razorstella was too kill focused to really notice this action, but that didn’t stop Spring Brawler from apologizing…
[I’m really sorry for this. YEET!]
…for throwing her like a lawn dart.
Once she had cleared a certain distance threshold, Spring Brawler quickly followed suit, ignoring the obvious source of killing intent behind him while grabbing the two Zhen Clan elders on the way out. Not that he was a big fan of doing so in the first place.
[This favor had better be worth it…]
